Sunday, November 7, 2010

Mariano Rivera watched him with the cold death of an assassin who has killed so well and so often for so long that he now does it with the fluidity of eating pasta. Linguini. Pleasantly oily. Goodnight.

"Lettuce be victorious," murmured Chip Hale, gnawing a forgotten sandwich, speaking to Jose Reyes who danced like a well programmed robot off third base. On second base, Angel Pagan was of two mindsets. One marveled at the moment. Game 7, world series, 9th inning. What a life. What a world. The other planned dinner. Tarragon. Rice. Seaweed. Dino Kale. Trust me, he said to himself. On first, Jason Bay was singing the "da na na na na nuh- HEY!" song. He was audible to everyone.

As David Wright jogged back to the batter's box, he reflected on all that happened to lead to this moment. Seven games back, with seventeen left to play, Jason Bay awoke one morning to find he was perfectly healthy and could resume baseball activities. Furthermore, upon whacking the seamed sphere with the stick, the sphere frequently flew over the barrier 400 feet away, allowing for free passage about the lily pads.

That same morning, Johan Santana awoke with both vim and vigor, and that was before finding out that all charges against him had been dropped. This made K-Rod hopeful, but, sorry dude, no.

Oliver Perez awoke in the middle of a really intense trip. He looked into his mirror, and said "Am I there?" He wasn't sure, but he did see Razor Shines where his bedside table usually sits.

"I dosed you pretty hard. Hope that's cool," said Razor.

"Give me the ball," said Perez.

For the next 17 games, the Mets won baseball games as if their opponents were children, and they were giant marsupials, some of whom could traverse entire basepaths in a single galumph. One game was won, because right at the moment that Chase Utley was to whack a Jon Niese slider most decisively, he was attacked by sparrows. He swung his bat wildly at the birds, missing them, and also the baseball, and so the game ended, and the Phillie Phanatic was so despondent that he wrote a letter to an ex, trying to impress her with the depth of his existential phleh.

Another game was won because, at a crucial moment in the 7th inning, Jeff Wilpon bought the Marlins, fired all of their employees, including the baseball players, so they had to forfeit the game. Wilpon then sold the Marlins, because he felt they were a shaky investment.

Most peculiar of all was that time when disciplined at-bats, well-executed pitches, enough hits for some of them to be timely, and some prudent managerial decisions resulted in a win against a somewhat less talented team. The game created enough of a stir to be covered as a non-local interest piece in Russian newspapers and Quantum EntangleMet.

The result of these things and more, was that the Metropolitans finished first in their division, with the Philistines as Wild Card.

In the first round, things were looking desparate against Los Gigantes. Razor Shines took Tim Lincecum out for dinner. The next day, Tim's changeup didn't change, but Oliver Perez was able to make the ball invisible. No one was sure how literally that was happening.

The second round meant the Phillies and boy were they mad. Mr. Met had somehow smuggled a young antelope into the Phillies locker room. The antelope itself wasn't dangerous, but the Phillies knew if they even got close to it, its mom would find them and destroy them. That whole episode really threw them off their game. Johan Santana was able to win the first game throwing nothing but change-ups. The Phillies swung early every time, including once when Jayson Werth struck out before the pitch had even been thrown.

"Is that even possible?" Werth asked Umptar the Umpire.

"Stop making excuses," said Umptar, basically peeing on the field (this is a metaphor).

In another game, every batter got a hit every time. It wasn't clear how innings were changing with no outs, but somehow they were. The umpires, managers, official scorer and Krang held a meeting, and decided that to reduce the silliness of the game, the teams would alternate at bats, and whichever team got a hit followed by getting the other team out would be victorious. Ike got the hit, then through an extrapolation of the hidden ball trick, became the pitcher, and struck out Ryan Howard on his patented pie ball. "I throw the ball exactly if I were throwing a pie," he said into any number of microphones after the game. "It usually works."

In the World Series, the Mets opponent would have been the Texas Rangers, however they were disqualified from the tournament due to a series of unfortunate events. Texas seceded from the nation, was promptly invaded by Mexico, reneged on their secession, which the U.S. accepted, but considered the entire state to have immigrated back into the country illegally, and detained Texas indefinitely. As an upshot of all that, the Texas baseball franchise, despite arguing that it is an institution separate from the state, was forced to withdraw from the World Series. They were replaced by a rather unpleasant beast, the New York Yankees.

As David Wright tapped his bat against his shoe, he remembered how the Yankees had bribed many of the Met players into sensory deprivation tanks, then taken advantage of their depleted roster, winning 3 of the first four games, losing only to Oliver Perez, whose pitches still may have been actually invisible, and who also hit a home run off C.C.C.C.

Awakened from their stupor, and brimming with inner peace, the Mets were most victorious in games 5 and 6. To Jason Bay, the ball appeared to be moving extremely slowly, as if the entire scene were underwater. "It's beautiful down here," he said to Jorge Posada, as he launched an Andy Pettite slurve into several other boroughs.

Then came game 7, and all of a sudden it was like everything was really serious, and things you said, and probably didn't even remember saying, they all came back to me like it was a big deal, and that time when I thought you were going to make coffee for both of us, and you were like I didn't know you wanted any, and I was like, well I'm here, right? so... and you were like yeah, but you knew I was making some and didn't say anything, and then in the park there was a man who talked to me for like twenty minutes about these different flying objects he had brought with him, and how he could throw them across the entire park on a good day, and at night as we walked by bars that were lit by candles due to the blackout and everyone seemed so happy to not have electricity, and

After eight innings, Santana had to come out. He had thrown so many pitches. He felt shipwrecked. Extremely shipwrecked. He had given up 2 runs on a clutch groundout from Jeter, followed by a boring, at-least-they're-paying-me homerun by Teixeira. Later, A-Rod stole home, but was booed for a really awkward high-5 with the batboy.

The Mets had not scored. Yankee pitcher Joba Chamberlain had used his starter's mentality to pitch eight shutout innings, with the help of sneaky offspeed stuff, and four homerun saving catches by Curtis Granderson. David Wright had watched him do it. Each time he used his gloved hand to leverage himself off the top of the wall and caught the ball bare-handed.

In the ninth, ageless Mo struck out Luis Castillo, despite some fabulous fake bunting. He got Josh Thole to hit a shockingly fast line drive that deflected off of Cano's glove, right to Jeter, who for no obvious reason, had positioned himself in shallow right-centerfield.

Jose Reyes came up to bat and strike one was already there waiting for him. He got ready to hit, but strike two had already let itself in. Then Rivera, toe absentmindedly on the mound, dropped the ball, and it rolled lazily away. Reyes swung at nothing, striking himself out, and then scampered to first really fast (but not faster than a speeding bullet, because that's completely unrealistic). Rivera hit Pagan with the next pitch, and Jason Bay laid down a Perfect Bunt for a single.

David Wright, his mental season recap completed, stepped into the batter's box and watched a cutter go by for strike one. Tension rose like steam off of the crowd, clouding glasses, including those of Umptar the Umpire, who called a second strike on a pitch that was like this far off the plate.

Jerry Manuel trotted out of the dugout, a freshly opened young coconut in his hand. He handed it to Wright, who gulped it hungrily.

"Who's Wright?" he whispered to David. Wright looked back vacantly. "Who's Wright?" Manuel repeated, but it was like David couldn't hear. The words seemed unfamiliar.

"Ok, meeting time over, let's get back to the... y'know... umm... sporting contest," said Umptar, who secretly didn't know the word for baseball.

Manuel retreated, shaking his head. Things looked hopeless. Wright gave a couple of practice swings then stepped back into the box.

"What did you say to him?" asked Razor Shines.

"I asked him who's Wright," said Manuel. David heard. Mariono Rivera went into his windup.

"I'm Wright!!!"

Whack.

The crowd, as if they had only just discovered the use of their own voices after untold years of harrowed silence, let loose a cry that cowed wild dogs in distant lands. The ball traveled deep into the centerfield and Granderson was lining it up. Yes, he thought, I will have this one too. He placed his mitt on the wall above the 400 sign, and lifted himself upward, beginning to extend his bare hand...

when the ball dropped just short of the warning track. Reyes scored to make it 2-1, Pagan scored to tie the game, Bay, swift as a weasel, rounded third. Brett Gardner's throw came in ahead of Bay. It bounced and rolled, but it was still going to get there first. Posada prepared himself for a Big Moment, a Big Big Moment, a Big Big B- the ball rolled through his legs! Bay scored standing up! The Mets win the World Series! The Mets win the World Series!

"Is that really how it happened Grandpa David Wright?" asked the innocent little ones.

"Oh," he sighed, "that's about Wright."

THANK YOU FOR READING BEAUTIFUL HUMANS! THAT'S ALL FOR THIS SEASON, BUT STAY TUNED FOR OFFSEASON MADNESS AND A TIME THAT WILL SURELY BE FULL OF MAGIC... 2011!